Google+ is becoming for me a great resource for keeping up with the status of projects I care about, and (so far) is low on trolling and other sociopathy. That’s even without using the more advanced features like Hangouts or Pages.

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“You are no longer allowed to order an Armagnac, digestif or any other after dinner drink that is older than you are.”

When I hear these hacks cry out that their work can’t be reduced to 140 characters I always think – if only – and pine for the useful hours I could get back in my life if spared their thumbsuckers.

To do this you have to let go of those things we once held true. Like:

- We are the gatekeepers of information.

- That we are the agenda setters and that we decide what news is and what is not.

- And that we keep the Outside world outside and only let in the chosen few – people like us.

“You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone” is not much of a business model.

The French philosopher Roland Barthes argues that when culture becomes nature we are in the presence of myth.

This has been one of the most gut-wrenching struggles for me to deal with because clearly journalism is not without value but, for sure, how it is largely practiced in print today – particularly “he said last night journalism” – nearly is valueless.

“the relationship between consumers and brands become less about the consumption of the product than about social relations, experiences and lifestyles such consumption enables.”

News companies, as brands, cheapen and destroy themselves if they do not allow the social interaction that society now demands of the new digital tool set.

- “We have always connected with our communities.” Read: letters to the editors or streeters.

- “Our readers are part of our process.” Read: surveys and citizen members of editorial boards.

- “We hear and act on their complaints.” Read: the ever-ineffectual Ombudsman.

The web ensures that doesn’t happen anymore. Or at least it doesn’t happen for a long period of time for a news company trying to survive.

Instead of seeing a snapshot of the body taken during the typical visit to a doctor’s office, iPOP effectively offers an IMAX movie, which in Snyder’s case had the added drama of charting his response to two viral infections and the emergence of type 2 diabetes.

Snyder, now 56, says he began the study 2 years ago because of a slew of technological advances that make it feasible to view the working of the body more intimately than ever before. “The way we’re practicing medicine now seems woefully inadequate,” he says. “When you go to the doctor’s office and they do a blood test, they typically measure no more than 20 things. With the technology out there now, we feel you should be able to measure thousands if not tens of thousands if not ultimately millions of things. That would be a much clearer picture of what’s going on.”

Acknowledges that QS is mainly about the quantification aspect, gathering data and analysing them, often minimally. It’s about motivation hacks, i.e. constructing situations, triggers, rewards and punishments in ways that maintain one’s motivation. Things like broadcasting your diet adherence or not to your friends (Twitter, G+, Facebook), getting a reward (HealthRally.com) giving up something as a punishment for not sticking to a commitment (Stickk) or even monetary loss (GymPact). It seems a bit aggressive though no doubt it works often enough. Programmable self uses social pressure as a default motivational hack, which in my opinion leaves little room for further data analysis.
Self-hacking is different in that it relies mostly on one’s understanding of behaviour, though observation, patterns, correlation and self-awareness. Another terms often used for this is personal feedback loop. Behavioural psychologists tell us that this is not enough to change one’s behaviour despite our best efforts, in which case there’s nothing to stop us from using motivational hacks. It is the layer of pattern-spotting and self-awareness that important in self-hacking as it insists on autonomy of the individual wanting a change of behaviour.
People use all of the above terms – quantified self, programmable self, self-hacking interchangeably. This is a fairly new trends or at least fairly newly visible and so this is the time to make such distinctions.

the glove could replace the current “labour intensive” ways in which patients’ progress is recorded. Ultimately it is hoped to lead to better treatment as well as savings for medical services. ”If patients are to receive the care needed to manage their condition and doctors the time to assess their condition thoroughly,” Curran says, “more accurate and less laborious methods to record joint movements are needed.”